Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/322



CHAPTER XXI.

CONVALESCENCE.

"It may be there was waiting for the coming of my feet, Some gift of such rare blessedness, some joy so strangely sweet, That my lips can only tremble with the thanks that I repeat."

But Alice was young and strong, and of an unbroken constitution; and youth, when aided by love and hope and happiness, recuperates rapidly. And the time soon came when Alice, sitting supported by her father's arms, with her trembling hand fondly clasped in that of her beloved grandmother, who seemed to her as one restored from the dead, could listen attentively to her father while he recounted to them the events of those passed years, which she had so longed to know and so vainly conjectured.

He described her mother to her as she was when they first met—her beauty, her